Question regarding rubber banding sinularia

Reefdudeinaus · Aug 9, 2020

Hi everybody,

I've been a long time lurker to this forum, and have signed up because I have a question about rubber banding a sinularia.

I bought this a couple of weeks ago, and it seemed to be going fine, it didn't really having any rock attached to it, but it had a harder rocky like “root” area, I have been trying to get it to attach to the live rock by just putting it in crevices, and it was fine, but it kept falling over after a few days. I finally got sick and tired of it falling over and spending ages trying to try and find a sturdy crevice to put it in, only to have it fall over again after a few days, so I attached it to a piece of rubble with a hairband (didn't have any rubber bands at the time). The hairband is around the harder rocky like "root" of the coral and the coral is attached on the side, part of the fleshy part is up against the hair banded rubble, and on the other side it is close to some live rock. Pictures are attached. The coral isn't fully opened in the picture because it has just been handled a few hours ago.

My question is, will this be enough for the coral to attach to the live rock permanently, and will it attach from the side fleshy bit, and/or the harder rocky "root" part? I don't have any experience in rubber banding before, so would be interested in anyone's opinion who has more knowledge than me. I don't really want to move it around too much and stress it, but if what I'm doing now isn't going to work I'd like a plan to move again and solve the problem for good. It seems fairly happy there at the moment as it is opening up fairly quickly, and I'm pretty confident it shouldn't fall from there, I'm just more interested in everybody's opinion as to if it will attach to the rock work in this position. Obviously my plan is to remove the hairband when it is firmly attached. I've tried glueing coral before with not great results, sooner or later is always seems to fall off. I also lost a sinilaria before that kept falling over, so I rubber banded it to avoid the same thing happening again.

Thanks in advance!

Old Fritz · Aug 9, 2020

I've never tried using rubberbands to hold coral in place but I have used rubberbands in an aquarium before and it worked fine for its purpose. I would only be concerned if there is a ton of pressure on the coral. Other than that you should be fine

fishguy242 · Aug 9, 2020

hair band not sure,rubberband will disinigrate in time,i prefer using needle and thread and passing though base twice tying to sm piece of live rock

KingTideCorals · Aug 9, 2020

So I am a softy nut! In my opinion this is one of their biggest flaws!

For me, I found the easiest thing to do to get the frags to attach to plugs were the following...

1. I would rubber band them to the plug and do so as lightly as possible without letting them float off the plug. The reason to do so is so that it can slowly grab hold and make a base for itself by having the pressure of the band on it.

2. I toss pieces into a mushroom box with rubble pieces. After a couple weeks they find their way onto them and make an anchor.

Overall, leathers can be tough to frag! Takes time and effort no doubt. Gorgeous piece by the way!!!